[Priest] State of Priest - Throne of Thunder [5.2] edition

The shadow effect of From Darkness; Comes Light does not seem to be maintaining its intended 15% trigger chance. Whether this is a bug or intended has yet to be answered.

Alright, time to move forward, seeing as hey we're now live. With changes, and reverts to changes, and confusing tooltips and what have you, what actually changed for Priests, that we can keep track of?

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Focused Will has been increased to 15% damage reduction per stack (up to 2), and is now shared with Holy Priests.

Holy Fire is now instant cast.

Talents

A single Psyfiend will no longer cast Psychic Horror on the same person twice.

Dominate Mind's cast time was lowered to 1.8 seconds (down from 2.5)

Angelic Feather now lasts 6 seconds (up from 4)

Phantasm's "freedom" effect has been increased to 5 seconds (up from 3) but no longer makes the Priest untargettable by ranged attacks

Power Word: Solace has been redesigned to Solace and Insanity.

For Discipline and Holy, this spell replaces Holy Fire, keeping the (new) instant cast but removing its mana cost, replacing it with a 1% mana restore.

This spell's damage transitions to healing for both Holy and Discipline

Power Word: Shield has a reduced mana cost by 25% and can now crit (both Discipline exclusive).

Penance's healing is now increased by Evangelism, it's base healing and damage has been increased by 20%, it's cooldown reduced to 9 seconds, and now has a 40 yard range for both offensive and defensive casting.

Rapture has been nerfed to 150% the caster's spirit, and now excludes temporary spirit buffs.

Divine Aegis no longer automatically triggers off of Prayer of Healing, and has been redesigned

When a Discipline Priest crits on a heal spell, the "crit" portion of the spell is 100% absorb based. Example: If your Heal does 20k worth of healing on average, and it crits, it still only does 20k worth of healing, but it attaches an absorb of 20k on top of that. Both numbers are increased by the crit meta, Grace, Archangel, the new Mastery, pretty much everything.

This is also undispellable

Spirit Shell is now undispellable, but no longer scales with the absorb portion of mastery rating.

The absorb value from baseline mastery and its rating has been reduced by 36% (baseline 20% -> 13%) but it now also increases healing (baseline at 6%).

Well, the two shadow buffs should close the damage gap a bit. The SW:P buff in particular is interesting. This, combined with the FD;CL bug or having only 2-t14/2-t15 set effect should put SW:P well ahead of VT for multi-DoT situations. Wondering if instant SW:P reapply is a good option to fill movement GCDs now, missing being able to do that with DP during Cata.

I was originally concerned about the nerfs to shadow heals considering how often I actually used them in raids. Then I realized Glyph of Binding Heal is awesome, considering that's what I usually spammed if I was going to de-form. Should nicely replace the now-useless Glyph of Mind Spike.

All-in-all, not much changed, but I'm looking forward to playing with what did.

The nerf to Rapture n' Mastery Absorb portion, might end up making Discipline mostly about spamming shields while trying to maintain resource through Pw: Solace / Mb, ultimately it could be a very rewarding spec to continue playing, or it could end up being such a hassle that it's not worth it, on the other hand.., if the dmg on fights are sustained enough, we will still resort mostly to PoH where the reworked Mastery could be enough to make up for the loss in Mastery Absorbs.

It seems that with Disc, they can never make up their mind. In Wrath, we were bubble spammers. They took that away and made us focus more on DA, Atonement, etc. We were still great healers with that so now they want us to spam bubbles a little more again. Make up your mind Blizz :3

It seems that with Disc, they can never make up their mind. In Wrath, we were bubble spammers. They took that away and made us focus more on DA, Atonement, etc. We were still great healers with that so now they want us to spam bubbles a little more again. Make up your mind Blizz :3

They have. The problem is, as far as 25's are concerned, Discipline's healingbreakdown was Prayer of Healing spam, Divine Aegis which is auto applied by Prayer of Healing, and Spirit Shell which is applied to your raid by spamming Prayer of Healing.

They don't want you to bubblespam, they just want you to use more of your toolkit, that's all.

I'm gonna say probably not, seeing as some Disc absorbs don't even benefit now. I'm guessing the mastery is case-by-case under the hood, rather than a blanket effect with some exceptions.

---------- Post added 2013-03-06 at 05:48 AM ----------

Tried out the changes on live. Shadow buffs are VERY noticeable. Mind Flay (Insanity) is awesome. DoTs are dealing about twice what they were yesterday (just got the 8k haste and my 4set today, but the 25% SW:P is a big part too.) I used to only break 90k on a good pull, now I do ~105k normally. The Affliction Warlocks in my guild say they look forward to not needing to carry me anymore.

Shadow buffs are making us very competitive. I can see now where the +20% Mind Blast buff and/or the change to 'flat' Devouring Plague would have been overkill.

and it's so hard to just give them to pve like they do with new warrior abilities at the start of expansions.

Next tier they are going to run into this problem again. Shadow healing will be nerfed again and they don't know what to do with PvE unless they make 2 sets of numbers which they wont do since it's a lot of work.

all my tooltips to do with absorbs seem bugged to shit :/ my actual shields are coming out like 20% less than the tool tips says :< (no buffs / procs any thing, just testing in the middle of no where both nekid and geared) anyone else getting this? other than that im interested to see how things play out havent had a real chance to test them yet.

on a side note, mastery heavy gear after patch, yay or nay? need to find if the shield changes make haste / crit more attractive now

Just wanted to post this question here to not open a extra thread. My guild is working on Tortos. I wondered if a paladin BoP'ed me before quake hit it would not break my channel of Divine Hymn when you get stunned.